PrivatAir U.S. Division Sold to Gama Holdings

Farnborough, UK-based business aircraft operations company Gama Holdings purchased PrivatAir Inc., the U.S. division of PrivatAir Group, on Friday for an undisclosed sum. Gama also bought 25 percent of charter operator Flight Services Group (FSG), which provides charter services to the former U.S. PrivatAir management clients. Gama Holdings has renamed the U.S. company Gama Aviation and said its headquarters will remain in Stratford, Conn. The move expands Gama’s U.S. interests, which until Friday included a small operation in Teterboro, N.J. Gama Holdings now manages 62 aircraft, and five more are scheduled for delivery by the end of this month. Although Flight Services Group is now partially foreign-owned, “operational control remains very strictly with FSG and its management,” according to a Gama Holdings spokesman. Despite the fact that a PrivatAir spokeswoman told AIN on February 5, “PrivatAir is not being sold” and that “no U.S. part of PrivatAir is being sold either,” PrivatAir CEO Greg Thomas said his company is “refocusing efforts on its European business and believes that the current buoyancy of the U.S. private aviation market makes it the perfect time to sell our U.S. division.”